LAUSD President, Selma star discuss public schools

Golden Globe-nominated actor David Oyelowo, Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education President Steve Zimmer and UCLA senior student activist Denea Joseph discussed their experiences in the education system and voiced their work toward educational justice in EdMonth’s closing panel, “Rebuild Our Education,” Tuesday night in Bovard Auditorium.

According to the organization’s flyer, EdMonth is a student-led campaign run by the Academic Culture Assembly devoted to raising awareness about the state of education in the United States. They programmed many events surrounding the education of marginalized groups in the past month.

The panel, moderated by EdMonth Executive Director Luis Vidalon-Suzuki, voiced their experiences with the education sector and recounted their activism work.

Oyelowo shared how playing historical roles, the most recent being Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma, has inspired him to educate others about diversity in Hollywood.

“I never really thought of myself as an educator,” Oyelowo said. “When I was training to be an actor, I didn’t think it was going to expand people’s view of the world. But in playing roles in those films, specifically Dr. King, that has become a big component of who I am, what I do, what I aspire to do.”

According to Oyelowo, working with different perspectives and making more diverse movies will contribute to the goal of overcoming prejudice in Hollywood.

“You have to educate my industry, not only about the ignorances that have been allowed to exist for too long, but also build a bridge between what the audience wants and what they perceive the audience wants,” Oyelowo said. “The only way to do that is to literally make these movies.”

Joseph then spoke about her work as the co-founder of IGNITE (Invest in Graduation, Not Incarceration, Transform Education) at UCLA. Through the organization, she has led grassroots campaigns protest against tuition increases in the UC system.

As an undocumented student herself, the UCLA senior has personally felt the effects of the tuition hikes. She discussed her progress in getting a tuition freeze for the UC system, but she also shared her other projects that primarily put money from prisons into schools.

As a counselor and teacher for 17 years at Marshall High School prior to serving as LAUSD president, Zimmer recognized the disparities in the educational system from the beginning of his teaching career.

He, along with other teachers in the California education system, helped undocumented students and started a movement against Proposition 187, which aimed to prevent undocumented immigrants from using public services.

“It would have turned teachers into immigration agents,” Zimmer said.

Though all three panelists recognize the increased promotion of diversity in American education, they agree that there’s much work to be done and suggested what could be done next.

“We have a long, long, long way to go,” Zimmer said. “We need to work with every fiber of our being to rapidly change that.”